Board Game Friday: April 2025 Plays

Happy Friday, everyone!  Now that April 2025 is officially in the books, it's time to take a look at all of the board games that I got to the table last month.  As usual, we'll start with the visual:

The month of April saw me play a lot of "old favorites" as well as a few new-to-me games.  On the new front, Dice Miner was a hit with both my son and me.  It's a simple game of dice drafting with a fun "stacked dice in a mountain" gimmick.  Dice Throne:  Season One Rerolled - Treant vs. Ninja and Monk vs. Paladin were also both new-to-us games.  The Dice Throne system is basically "battle Yahtzee."  Simple enough to teach a six-year-old, while still being fun enough for dad!  The luck element that is inherent in any dice-based game also helps even the playing field a bit.  The last new-to-me game was Theme Park Mania, a game with a gorgeous production (albeit using a lot of AI art, I think).  Unfortunately, the game itself didn't grab me enough for me to want to keep it in my collection.  I already have too many amusement park-themed games, and with shelf space an issue, I need to try to keep my favorite game(s) of each genre and unload the rest to other homes!

Looking now at my Top 9 most played games of the month a little closer, you'll see that Sprawlopolis ended up as my most played game of April:

Sprawlopolis is a solo game about building up a city while trying to complete three objectives.  The game punches well above its weight both in terms of components and rules load.  I've enjoyed the solo puzzle a lot (and the game was basically my "go-to" game whenever I needed a solo game to help ensure my "at least one board game played per day" goal continued to stay alive)!   Finally, I got both Lost Ruins of Arnak back to the physical table (with the first expansion included) and Slay the Spire: the Board Game back to the table.  Both of those games are among my favorites so getting to play both in person in the same month was a real treat (both are probably still too advanced for my son).  

That does it for April!